September 7 – October 5, 2019

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Ebbs

NEW WORKS BY DYLAN REITZ

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Ebbs knits the digital and physical into a hybrid space, encouraging interactive engagement with each sculpture through a corresponding, looping animation that sets the work in motion on the viewer’s phone screen. Influenced by the work of artists like Nam June Paik, Henry Selick, and Tauba Arbach, Reitz combines traditional forms of art with more modern digital media, creating installations that ruminate on motion, space, and time.

These moving portraits exist both within and outside of the viewer’s immediate perception of the physical world. They’re heavily inspired by Reitz’s own, meticulous practice, as well as by the perpetual motion of the tides and the slow geological processes that shape the surface of our Earth. Reitz’s use of technology, rather than being central to the work, is a means of extending the meditative creative process and exploration of natural cycles. Once the viewer witnesses the work come to life, its movement lingers like an afterimage in the presence of the stationary sculpture, collapsing the categories of virtual and lived experiences into a beautiful expression of subtle playfulness and contemplative thought.

Throughout the body of work, both organic shape and geometric form are equally displayed. They emerge in gently variant shades of white with surfaces that are textured, layered, and at times extend past the two-dimensionality of the frame in protruding slopes that recall the surface of the ocean or the moon. Closer inspection of the work reveals its delicacy: Reitz has executed the work of recycled papermaking, thus also creating the material with which he sculpts. This incredibly slow and thoughtful process is integral to the concept of Ebbs.

Says the artist, “My work is process-forward, and be it while making paper or animating, I enter a calming flow. In this series, I wanted to communicate the feeling that occurs when a moment stretches out or condenses, in which you feel outside yourself.”

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